2011 — Gbagbo's Capture

On April 11, 2011, the four-month siege of Abidjan came to an end when Laurent Gbagbo was pulled from an underground bunker at his presidential residence. Gbagbo had refused to step down after losing Côte d'Ivoire's disputed 2010 election. French and United Nations troops helped end the standoff that had gripped the city and the country for months.

The crisis had cost nearly 3,000 lives and displaced a million people before that day in the bunker. Gbagbo would become the first former head of state taken into International Criminal Court custody, a precedent that carried the Ivorian crisis far beyond Abidjan.